


Archangel Rising

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Series: February Ficlet Challenge 2018 [9]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Multi, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: Two years ago, the best team of supers in the galaxy lost its ship and its leader. Now, two of the survivors try to pick up the pieces and face a new threat: a mysterious woman known only as the Renegade.Pairing: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian/Tali'Zorah vas NormandyPrompt: Superhero/supervillain AU





	Archangel Rising

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by imaginary_golux

“Here’s a better idea: let the quarian set his own prices.” A familiar voice and the tang of ozone cuts through the fetid Omega stench. 

“With barely restrained terror: Yes, yes, I will do it. Conciliatory: As a gesture of good faith, I offer a discount at my store.” Harrot backs away from the fearsome figure opposite him even as a turian slips out of the shadows towards her.

“Tali?” 

“Garrus!” The lightning wreathing her fingers vanishes with delight as she raises a hand to his scarred cheek. “What happened to you?” 

“Let’s just say it’s been a long two years,” he rumbles. “Come on, let me buy you a drink, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

They sip dextro rotgut in a sleazy bar. “I’m sorry I lost track of you after the Normandy went down,” Tali apologizes. Without their core, they’d all drifted away. 

“I was trying pretty hard to get lost,” he admits. “I went full vigilante for a while. Put together my own squad, tried to right wrongs.” He leans back in his chair with contentment. “Put a lot of bad people in boxes. It was almost enough.” Tali clasps his hand with hers, missing the feel of five small fingers twined with theirs. “What about you?”

“I’ve been helping defend my people against the geth, and Cerberus.” She spits this last word with so much force that Garrus hopes she has some way of cleaning the inside of her faceplate. “I’ve got my own team, too.” She wavers, fretting with her hands. “One of them, Kal’Reegar...I think he wants to be more than coworkers?”

“But you don’t?”

“You could always read me through the mask,” she laughs. Really, it was a wonder the three of them had worked together as well as they had, from three different species.

“It’s mostly the visor,” he deadpans, only his subharmonics betraying his kidding. He’s had a few offers over the last two years, even thought about accepting some of them. None of them had been the same as what they had had. What they had had with Shepard.

“So, where’s the team?” He flinches away from the question. “How did it happen?”

“Betrayed by one of my own. Barely escaped with my life.” He glowers. “I’ve been hiding out ever since. Haven’t dared to try to book passage.” 

“I’ve got a ship,” she offers. “We’re headed to the Citadel, if you wanted to change ships there,” she adds hastily.

“The Citadel sounds...nice. Being able to inhale, for one thing.”

“Tell me about it--for once, I’m glad of the filtered air.”

A bottle shatters behind them. “Hey, you, turian.” A thickly muscled man stands over them, broken bottle in his hand, the sharp edges gleaming with menace. “Awful lot of credits on your head, Arch--”

A single gunshot drowns out whatever he was going to say next. The thug falls away, blood spurting from between his eyes. “We have to go, now,” he says, low but firm, a thin line of smoke still rising from the muzzle of his pistol. 

“Nice shot, if a little cold-blooded.”

“Trust me: that name is too dangerous here.” They navigate the crowd with surprising ease. He tries not to feel too bitter about casual murder having become commonplace on Omega. Again.

“Luckily my ship is close,” she whispers back, unholstering her shotgun. If this turns messy, she’s ready, and the gun is a little more subtle than her electrical powers. “Can you still carry me?”

“Always.” His pace quickens as more eyes seem to track them. 

“Kal, get the ship ready to launch; we’re going out hot,” she barks into her comlink. “Down!” She pulls Garrus out of the line of fire as a merc takes a potshot at them. “Go, go, go!” She empties her clip into a Blood Pack krogan trying to block their way. 

“I’m going to need some room to take off,” he manages raggedly, trading shots with the mercs.

“Leave that to me,” she barks, casting stealth to the wind as she cuts loose with a static discharge, more flash than anything, but it makes everyone jump back long enough for Garrus to sweep her over his shoulder and break into a dead sprint and get up to flying speed. “Nice work, Archangel,” she whispers in his ear as he swoops them up into the murky Omega shadows.

***

“Have you heard from any of the others?” he asks once they are back on the ship.

“Kaidan and Ashley are together.” He snorts. Not a surprise. “Wrex is back on Tuchanka. Not sure where Liara and Joker are.”

He nods. “So, what brings you to the Citadel?”

“Funny you should ask…”

***

“Sparks and Archangel? Didn’t expect to see the two of you working together again.” 

“To be fair, Captain, neither did we,” Tali says, and leaves it at that. “We hear you have a problem.”

“Cerberus is at it again. Or, more specifically, their latest operative.” He tosses them a datapad. “They’re calling her the Renegade.” A smoked glass visor conceals her features, but what appear to be glowing orange scars shine through. “She’s a biotic and a super: enhanced strength and speed, and nearly invulnerable.”

“What’s she done?”

Bailey snorts a laugh. “That’s the thing: everywhere she’s been sighted, human colonies go missing. So much for Cerberus being a human supremacist group.”

“So you want us to stop her?”

“That’s the size of it.” Bailey shrugs. “Wish I could help, but I’ve got my hands full keeping this place running.”

“Thanks for the tip, Bailey,” Garrus says. “We’ll look into it.” Tali smiles. We. We was nice.

***

Bailey’s lead takes them to a planet called Horizon. There’s no sign of the Renegade at first, but there are a lot of aliens that Garrus doesn’t recognize. Aliens that don’t appreciate them being there, if the laser fire is anything to go by. A sniper round kills them just as dead, which Garrus appreciates. 

He misses a shot when he spots her through his scope. 

“The Renegade?” Tali surmises. He nods. He doesn’t miss the second shot, and another of the strange aliens loses one of its too-many eyes.

They’re fighting towards the Renegade, and she doesn’t appear to be inclined to attack them, so Garrus and Tali return the favor, appreciating the way her biotics decimate the battlefield. They fall into an odd rhythm, ignoring the salarian and the krogan with her, punishing their foes with bullets, lightning, and biotics. It’s...soothing. In a way that few things have been, these last few years.

But the fight draws to a close, and then they are face to face with the Renegade. Tali and Garrus instinctively shift their posture so they are standing closer together, drawing strength from proximity. 

The silence is broken by the pop of armor unsealing, and the Renegade unseals her helmet. “Garrus? Tali?”

“Shepard!?” they chorus as she runs towards them, pulling them into a hug. “We’d thought we’d lost you.” Garrus snuffles a sob. “We thought you were dead.”

“Worse: we thought you were working for Cerberus.” Tali laughs but her heart isn’t in it, and her voice wobbles.

“To be fair, I was dead, and I am working with Cerberus. They’re helping me stop the Collectors--they’ve been abducting humans” Shepard pulls them back into a hug. “And then I’m going to blow up Cerberus from the inside.” Tali rubs her helmet against Shepard’s cheek to hide her laughter, hopes it looks like a fond gesture. “You in?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Garrus says, and sweeps them into one last crushing hug, breathing the scent of them in.


End file.
